balustrade which surrounds the platform, and
let it fly into the abyss. The enormous timber, during that fall of a
hundred and sixty feet, scraping the wall, breaking the carvings, turned
many times on its centre, like the arm of a windmill flying off alone
through space. At last it reached the ground, the horrible cry arose,
and the black beam, as it rebounded from the pavement, resembled a
serpent leaping.

Quasimodo beheld the outcasts scatter at the fall of the beam, like
ashes at the breath of a child. He took advantage of their fright, and
while they were fixing a superstitious glance on the club which had
fallen from heaven, and while they were putting out the eyes of the
stone saints on the front with a discharge of arrows and buckshot,
Quasimodo was silently piling up plaster, stones, and rough blocks of
stone, even the sacks of tools belonging to the masons, on the edge of
the balustrade from which the beam had already been hurled.

Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the shower of
rough blocks of stone began to fall, and it seemed to them that the
church itself was being demolished over their heads.

Any one who could have beheld Quasimodo at that moment would have been
frightened. Independently of the projectiles which he had piled upon the
balustrade, he had collected a heap of stones on the platform itself. As
fast as the blocks on the exterior edge were exhausted, he drew on the
heap. Then he stooped and rose, stooped and rose again with incredible
activity. His huge gnome's head bent over the balustrade, then an
enormous stone fell, then another, then another. From time to time, he
followed a fine stone with his eye, and when it did good execution, he
said, "Hum!"

Meanwhile, the beggars did not grow discouraged. The thick door on which
they were venting their fury had already trembled more than twenty
times beneath the weight of their oaken battering-ram, multiplied by the
strength of a hundred men. The panels cracked, the carved work flew into
splinters, the hinges, at every blow, leaped from their pins, the planks
yawned, the wood crumbled to powder, ground between the iron sheathing.
Fortunately for Quasimodo, there was more iron than wood.

Nevertheless, he felt that the great door was yielding. Although he did
not hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated simultaneously in the
vaults of the church and within it. From above he beheld the vagabonds,
filled with triumph and r